macOS Sierra: Drag and drop problems

You can read this article : macOS Sierra: Mouse & Trackpad pane of Accessibility System Preferences

Open system preferences > Accessibility > click on mouse and trackpad > click on trackpad options , check the boxes as shown & set the settings .

If we click on drop down arrows of screen enable screen dragging and keep at as with drag lock .

Dragging will be stopped , also to move an object on a a surface needs inertia , Apple has used this concept of inertia for scrolling .

The law of inertia states that an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

So force is applied to to move an object from rest position to an another point .

In the same way to scroll on the computer inertia and three finger drag must be enabled .

Try setting up another admin user account to see if the same problem continues. If Back-to-My Mac is selected in System Preferences, the Guest account will not work. The intent is to see if it is specific to one account or a system wide problem. This account can be deleted later. Please post if this worked or not.

Isolating an issue by using another user account

If the problem is still there, try booting into the Safe Mode using your normal account. Disconnect all peripherals except those needed for the test. Shut down the computer and then power it back up after waiting 10 seconds. Immediately after hearing the startup chime, hold down the shift key and continue to hold it until the gray Apple icon and a progress bar appear. The boot up is significantly slower than normal. This will reset some caches, forces a directory check, and disables all startup and login items, among other things. When you reboot normally, the initial reboot may be slower than normal. If the system operates normally, there may be 3rd party applications which are causing a problem. Try deleting/disabling the third party applications after a restart by using the application un-installer or by using the developer’s uninstall instructions. For each disable/delete, you will need to restart if you don't do them all at once. Please post if this worked or not.

Safe Mode - About El Capitan
also Sierra

Safe Mode Startup – El Capitan. also Sierra

If it works in the Safe Mode, try running this program when booted normally and then copy and paste the output in a reply. The program was created by Etresoft, a frequent contributor. Please use copy and paste as screen shots can be hard to read. Click “Share Report” button in the toolbar, select “Copy to Clipboard” and then paste into a reply. This will show what is running on your computer. No personal information is shown. You can run the report for free at least once, but if you run it several times, at some point it will ask you to pay a license fee.

Etrecheck – System Information

How can you activate it to work with a mouse? I got it to work on my laptop using the trackpad, because this setting is in the trackpad settings... but what about a desktop with only a mouse? Why did this *stop* working in the first place. Thanks!

I also only have a mouse and I'm really annoyed why this just stopped working and that there is only a work around for trackpad users. Did you ever figure out how to fix this on your mouse-only desktop?

Have you solved this permanently? I used the solution mentioned and it seemed to work, but there are still instances where the drag/drop is wonky. I'm trying to make a photobook on Shutterfly and I'm ready to launch my MacBook across the room. Every time I try to drag a photo into a space on their template, it drags onto the Widgets dashboard.

Same problem, brand new out of the box iMac. I restored my photo library from backup and trying to create a calendar in Photos, but I cannot get drag and drop reliably working with either mouse or trackpad. It’s, what, a 30 year old metaphor for working with objects on a computer? Why is it even a thing I have to enable?

My issue is similar but specific to the new'ish WkWebView; on High Sierra it appears its content needs to have content URL scheme registered, yet the package method to do so is missing:

classfunc registerURLScheme(asLocal scheme:String!)

which I take a developer would register "file:" among schemes to be treated a local content especially for sandbox support.

/los

Anyone have an update for this? I'm dealing with the same annoying issue. It seems that there is a delay between letting go of the track pad and when the macbook releases the window. Is there a place where this delay can be changed?

Eric - thanks for your response. None of the options fixed the drag issue. The issue was the same on another admin account, and the safe mode had the same problem. Have uninstalled many applications as well.

Any other ideas?

When trying to drag, the rainbow spinning wheel appears and the item is dragged to the location of my mouse over 5 seconds later.

This helped me, thank you!

i swear the latest update made it worse, not better.

Interesting..the drag and drop was working until I restored my photo library yesterday! Now I'm stuck without drag and drop!

This didn't resolve my problem. Have restarted computer and updated trackpad accordingly yet still can't drag on my desktop.